Far, Far the Mountain Peak

by Arthur Clifford

  Delicious Undercover Operation

  In fact it was just the sort of undercover operation that Donald Mackay loved. All those forensic skills which had lain unused since his Ulster days were unearthed and lovingly repolished.

  A missive was dispatched to the now devoutly Catholic Steadman in his sun-blasted Paraguayan outpost, hinting at ‘unfortunate and potentially damaging rumours’ which needed to be ‘firmly squashed’ before they resulted in ‘prurient and most unpleasant publicity’.

  ‘That’ll set the cat among his pigeons!’ chortled a gleeful Bishop.

  A prompt and decisive reply was all the more urgent as the ‘well-being of an innocent schoolboy’ was at stake.

  A war began – or, rather was renewed! – with the Foreign Office. Peremptory letters to Rabat. Letters to influential politicians. Telephone calls to Foreign Office mandarins. Hints about possible ‘embarrassing disclosures to a sensation-hungry press’. Donald Mackay was not above applying a little judicious blackmail where he felt it necessary in the pursuit of justice. War was war, and there was no place for wishy-washy sentimentality.

  Next, he paid a visit to Morris at Morton Community College.

  ‘I’m writing an article for the Diocesan Journal about youth work in Boldonbridge. You, I gather, led a group of youngsters to the summit of the highest mountain in North Africa. Quite an achievement, I might add. Could you tell me all about it?’

  There was nothing Morris would have liked better. Public vindication. Vital ammunition to bolster his campaign to become head of the Morton PE Department. Long and enthusiastic reply. Copious notes taken. Secretly, too, the Bishop taped the conversation; something he’d remembered from his Ulster days.

  Then he cornered Tracy; but not at Morton College where she could be influenced by Dobson. Instead he chose the more relaxed venue of the council house where she lived with her single-parent mother. The three of them went into a huddle over the teacups in the cosy little living room.

  He opened the proceedings by speaking in Geordie so as to sound reassuring and not ecclesiastical. ‘I’ve got this article to write aboot youth work in Boldonbridge. Noo I’d like the feminine angle on the Morocco expedition. Can’t ’ave been that easy bein’ a lass among all them lads, like?’

  Long reply. More copious notes taken.

  ‘And noo the awkward bit, like. Sorry an’ that. But warraboot this business of drugs an’ that what the newspapers is on aboot?’

  Immediate defensive bristle. ‘That weren’t us lot! It were Kevin Bartlett an’ them lot! Rotten bastards!’

  ‘Tracy, lass! Watch yer language!’ exclaimed her mother.

  ‘But, Mam, it weren’t us, yer knaa!’

  ‘But weren’t one o’ yer lads – John Denby or sommat? – into drugs an’ all?’

  ‘Why no! Weren’t ’im! Weren’t that sort. Too posh like!’

  ‘But weren’t he a canny bit daft an’ that?’

  ‘Why no! He were reet canny him! Mind, wor Brian ’ad it in forrim, jus’ cos he talked a bit posh like. Weren’t right! But me… why, man, I fancied him, like!’

  ‘Eeeee, Tracy, yer naughty lass!’

  ‘But Mam, he were a loverly lad, him! He were the one that gorrus up Toubkal, yer knaa! Ah mean that Mr Morris, like, he weren’t nivver there! It were John Denby what gorrus there all on his own, yer knaa! Paid for the busses an’ that hissell.’

  ‘That’s news to me!’ chortled the Bishop. ‘Now tell us all aboot it.’

  Tracy prattled away for the next ten minutes.

  ‘That John, he were ever so Christian, yer knaa. Spent all his money on donkeys an’ that for me and Maureen. An’ yer knaa, he were givin’ all his things, clothes an’ that, to the poor Pakkies. Yer knaa, like what the Bible says. An’ when we was robbed, why he sacrificed hissell for us lasses. He were a knight in shinin’ armour, him. Mind, the lads didn’t like ’im! Treated ’im sommat rotten like. Kev did ’im over an’ Jim called ’im a poof. But he weren’t no poof! Knight in shinin’ armour.’

  As well as taking copious notes, again the Bishop secretly taped the conversation.

  Finally, he managed to run Jim to earth. They went to a little cafe on the edge of the dingy estate where he lived. There, among the sauce bottles and plastic tablecloths, they talked over mugs of Nescafé. Or, rather, tried to talk. Guarded and suspicious and with his pointy face twisted up into a fixed scowl, Jim was surly and monosyllabic. Getting anything out of him was heavy going. But eventually, bit by bit, a story unfolded…

  ‘John? Him? Brainy. Ah’ll gee ’im that much like. But always showin’ off an’ that. Had ter be the star, him. Soft as shit, mind. Kev did ’im over. Set ’im crying like a liddell kid, yer knaa. Poof? Yeah, not ’arf! Why he were dressin’ up in Bob Steadman’s clothes, yer knaa? Couple o’ homs the pair o’ them if yer asks me!’ Drugs? No way! Too soft for that sort o’thing!’

  Long silence.

  Then a final lunge. ‘What the fuck’s all this aboot like? What’s yer game, eh?’

  A mature, streetwise young man, this, the Bishop decided, bold beyond his years. The hard product of a hard environment. He’d seen his like before. In Ulster he would have been a paramilitary. Here he’d end up in the army. One of those military machines you found in the Parachute Regiment. The sort of phenomenon the likes of Isobel would never understand. But he’d got what he wanted out of him, and taped it for good measure. So back off. Don’t push it any further.

  A Little Dinner Party

  And now for ‘soft as shit’ John Denby. Dorothy was telephoned and given her orders. ‘About your little protégé, John Denby. I intend to get to the bottom of this Morocco business. Need to talk to him – what in the army they call interrogation… No, you silly woman, there won’t be any third degree. No hooding or water boarding, just a little gentle inducement. Arrange a little party where he can show us his slides and get talking… I’ll bring Akroyd along, too. This Saturday at six o’clock. Got it? Good. I expect a properly professional performance. Goes without saying.’

  Dorothy shuddered, but had no choice. Orders were orders.

  Slipping into ‘shaggy sheepdog’ mode – indeed, to a practised eye, the performance was a hammed-up caricature – she duly approached John.

  Sweet smiles and maternal gush. ‘John, I’ve got a special task for you. Can you stay at Fern Avenue over the weekend and give a slide show on Saturday night?’

  ‘Huh? But I’ve already given you a slide show.’

  ‘But this is special. The Bishop’s coming to supper!’

  ‘Oh God! Not him! He freaks me out. Scares me shitless! Oh, er, sorry about the bad language! What does he want?’

  ‘No need to look like that about it!’ Every need, in fact! The Bishop scared her rigid, too! ‘The Bishop’s a fan of yours. You of all people should know that! He wants to know all about your exploits in Morocco.’ Yes, but not quite in the way that you might think! ‘You’re quite famous, you know. And, by the way, Mr Akroyd, the school solicitor’s coming along, too. He’s an assessor for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme, you know, on the Wild Country Panel, and he’s thinking of fast-tracking you for a Silver medal, and also for Gold.’ Lies, this: blatant lies! But gild the honey trap! Those are your orders…

  John’s pouty adolescent face broke into a broad grin. ‘Wow! Yeah! I’ll do my best!’

  Hooked! Soaring up into the stratosphere. Yes, I really am a special person. A high-achiever whose brilliant talents are being recognised by high up, influential people. But this time I’m not going to grovel in front of that great gorilla, the Bishop! I’m not taking any crap out of him! I’m not a little shit-pants kid any more. I’m a lad – and a fucking great lad, too!

  A Silly Adolescent

  Saturday morning found Dorothy crashing round in her kitchen. She was all on edge, nerves taut, dreading the evening th
at lay ahead. At the very least it promised humiliation at the hands of that ghastly humanoid gorilla, the Bishop. Then there was Ackroyd, a typical lawyer who always had to score points off her, nit-picking away, finding fault with everything and continually having to put her down into her proper place. Worst of all were the excruciating revelations that would doubtless emerge about John had really got up to on that wretched Morocco expedition! What with the coming school inspection, she had an enormous amount paperwork to get through. Yet here she was, thrashing round trying to create a quiche sophisticated enough to satisfy the pretentions of a couple of gastronomic snobs. The whole charade was so infernally exasperating.

  And, just to cap it all, John’s recent successes had gone to his silly adolescent head. He had puffed himself up into a callow and pompous juvenile arrogance. He was right into the ‘I’ve outgrown you: I’m better than you are’ thing. It was contrived confrontations all the time.

  ‘John, could you wash these wine glasses while I deal with the oven?’

  ‘But I’m sorting out my slides and they’re much more important!’

  She went into the living room to set the dinner table, only to discover that he’d drawn the curtains and rearranged the furniture.

  ‘John, we’re supposed to be having supper in this room.’

  ‘But I’ve got to give a proper slide show. This isn’t just a cosy little family get-together, you know. They’re really important people.’

  Then she realised that she hadn’t got enough cheese. ‘John, could you watch the kitchen while I slip down to Millwards?’

  ‘Oh hell! Do I have to?’

  So it went on. She bristled. She really wanted to slap his silly, sulky face for him; or, better still, put him over her knee and spank his bottom. But with a gangling fifteen-year-old, neither was a feasible option. The fact was that there was nothing she could do. Except grit her teeth and grin and bear it.

  Poor, silly, deluded mite, she thought as he strutted pompously round the house. He hadn’t the first idea of what was really going on. Well, he’d soon find out! In the meantime it all went to show just how limited a schoolboy’s view of the world really was.

  A grudging compromise was eventually reached. The living room was organised to accommodate the dining table – albeit squeezed uncomfortably up against the window – and he agreed to watch the kitchen while she panicked off to Millward’s in search of cheese.

  A Ghastly Evening

  Put-Downs

  Evening came. Dorothy dressed up in her available Marks & Spencer’s off-the-peg finery. Not, of course, that finery was exactly her line; indeed, her lack of dress sense was notorious. The Bishop arrived in scruff order, looking as if he had just stepped off the footplate of one of his beloved steam engines. This was a subtle put-down: you may have to obey dress codes, but, as your superior, I don’t have to! He was unusually affable and avuncular; a mode that set the alarm bells ringing with people like Dorothy who knew his true nature. Hidden booby traps were obviously lurking for the unwary.

  A little later Ackroyd turned up, dressed to a tee in an elegant pin-striped suit and one of those shirts which sported a different-coloured collar. A subtly patterned tie proclaimed his membership of some esoteric and elite legal society. Here was another sartorial message for Dorothy: I know what real sophistication is, even if you don’t, and what is more, I have been successful enough in life to be able to achieve it.

  True to form – and right on cue – he started to nit-pick. He eyed the photograph of the cloud-wreathed peak of Margherita on the wall, Dorothy’s pride and joy.

  ‘Fine photo that, really artistic. I congratulate you. Pity it wasn’t better printed, though. Where did you get it done?’

  ‘I think it was at Boots.’

  ‘You didn’t, did you? Well, that explains the fuzziness.’

  A PR catastrophe?

  Supper began.

  Showing off like mad, John scuttled about serving the quiche and vegetables.

  ‘I see you’ve got him well trained,’ observed the Bishop.

  ‘But in future you might tell him to serve from the right-hand side and not the left,’ added Ackroyd.

  Without asking Dorothy, John dashed into the kitchen and emerged with an open bottle of red wine. With an elaborate fuss he started to fill the glasses.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Ackroyd.

  ‘I think it’s Burgundy… or it could be claret, I think,’ replied Dorothy.

  ‘Think? I thought you would have known!’

  Dorothy didn’t know. Wine was not her forte. She’d just rushed into Millward’s Deli and grabbed some suitably exotic-looking bottles off the shelf.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Millward’s.’

  ‘Then it’s probably some cheap plonk that they’ve put into a fancy bottle. That’s how they con gullible customers, you know. Galbraith’s in Blackhouse Lane is where you should go if you want the real stuff. You might remember that in future.’

  Meanwhile John had sat down and poured himself a tumbler-full of wine. Dorothy seethed. This was an open defiance of her specific orders about not drinking alcohol. It was bad enough being lectured to about the purchase of wine. This was much worse. Her credibility as a controller of teenagers was at stake.

  ‘John,’ she said quietly, ‘I thought we’d agreed that the wine was to be for the adults only.’

  ‘Oh, come on! I’m not a little kid any more!’

  ‘Oh, let him have it!’ grinned the Bishop. ‘He’s got to start sometime.’

  ‘In vino veritas,’ added Ackroyd with a wink. A not-so-subtle hint of the hidden agenda of the gathering.

  Dorothy writhed.

  John drained the tumbler and then helped himself to another even larger dose, and to another after that, and to yet another… which finally drained the bottle. The results were soon embarrassingly apparent – at least to Dorothy. He became loud and giggly and dominated the conversation, hectoring on in a shrill, rasping voice about rugby matches and the screwed-up section attack at the recent cadet weekend camp.

  When the first course ended, he scooped up the plates and vegetable dishes and bundled them into the kitchen. A loud crash and a horribly audible ‘Oh shit!’ followed.

  ‘There goes your dinner service, Mrs Watson,’ said Ackroyd.

  Dorothy squirmed. The horrible evening was fast getting out of hand.

  After a while John returned with a trayful of cheesecake, which he dumped unceremoniously in the middle of the table.

  ‘Sorry about the crash, folks!’ he giggled. ‘But my bloody foot got caught on the table.’ Snigger! Snigger! Splutter!

  Once more Dorothy squirmed, but before she could say anything, he had disappeared into the kitchen again. Another crash and a loud ‘Oh fuck!’ followed.

  ‘There go the remainder of your plates, Mrs Watson,’ said Ackroyd. ‘That’ll mean another visit to Millward’s.’

  ‘John, do be more careful!’ snapped Dorothy as John returned, brandishing a large Stilton cheese.

  ‘Weren’t my bloody fault!’ he giggled inanely as he plonked the cheese in front of Ackroyd. ‘It was that bloody chair.’

  ‘And where did you get this cheese, Mrs Watson,’ asked Ackroyd. ‘Not at Millward’s again?’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘You get better stuff in a little place down by the quayside. And, by the way, you ought to add a little port if you really want to appreciate the true subtlety of the flavour.’

  ‘There’s a bottle of port on the kitchen shelf,’ spluttered John. ‘Hang on, I’ll get it!’

  ‘No, John, you won’t!’ exclaimed Dorothy forcibly. ‘You just sit down and try to behave yourself while I get it!’

  With that she disappeared into the kitchen and returned a minute later with a large bottle labelled, ‘Millward’s Speci
al Christmas Port’.

  ‘Ersatz, again, I see,’ observed Ackroyd, superciliously as she poured the bright red liquid into a hole in the cheese. ‘But, still, we might as well drink a little toast to our young hero, here.’

  ‘Young hero’ was hardly how she would have described the smirking John in front of her as she began to pour the port into the wine glasses.

  ‘Excuse me,’ interrupted Ackroyd. ‘But isn’t it customary to drink port from special port glasses?’

  ‘Oh, sorry!’ spluttered Dorothy, ‘I must have forgotten. Wait a minute while I get them.’

  ‘I can get them!’ said John, standing up.

  ‘No, John, I’ll get them thank you!’ she replied testily. ‘You’ve done quite enough damage for one night!’ Those port glasses were a treasured gift from her long dead father, lovingly preserved, but never used. The last thing she wanted was an oafish teenager getting his clumsy – and sacrilegious! – hands on what, to her, amounted almost to a sacred relic.

  When she returned with them she found to her embarrassed fury that John had poured himself half a tumbler of port.

  Worse and worse! Her prize pupil, the carefully furbished exhibit who was earmarked to prove her pedagogic excellence to a disbelieving public, behaving like this! What must her distinguished guests have thought of him? And not only of him, but of her? That she couldn’t control a whole school of them? What a PR catastrophe!

  A Slide Show, With Consequences

  Eventually the gruesome meal ended and she managed to clear the table without too much trouble, apart from John spilling the remains of the port onto the carpet. The lights went out and she gritted her teeth as the long-prepared slide show began.

  Well-oiled with the wine and the port, John gave what he thought was a bravura performance. Sniggering and burping, he played up to his seemingly admiring audience and revelled in his position as the centre of attention. Once more, Dorothy writhed and squirmed. Had he the first idea of what an idiot he was making of himself?

  Finally the excruciating show ended and the lights went on. The Bishop and Ackroyd gave a round of applause.